BS 11000 Stage 7 Staying together (Clause 9)

BS 11000 Stage 7 (Clause 9) is about maintaining an effective relationship. After all this hard work you don’t want it to wither and die do you?

Collaborating successfully means staying together using BS 11000

Utilising the agreed measurements to monitor the relationship so you can jointly take action will help to maximise the relationship, facilitate continual improvement and deal proactively with any disputes in an open and transparent manner. Below I have shared with you the main points with regards to BS11000 Clause 9 Staying together

Monitoring and measuring the relationship: As with all relationships you need to
continually work and provide input to strengthen it and deliver the agreed outcomes. Putting in place a joint management team will help you (SER) to ensure measurements are in place, are reviewed frequently and corrective actions are implemented.

Ongoing measurement: Making sure everyone is delivering their part of the relationship in all aspects will ensure the relationship is a continuing success. You need to ensure the SER’s oversee this part of the relationship to provide the necessary support, guidance and deal with challenges quickly.

Continual innovation: In Stage 6 we discussed the value creation process. Staying together will be dependant on how well the relationship performs and it’s sustainability. In all relationships keeping it alive, dynamic and vibrant is essential.

Maintain behaviours and trust: Although this stage talks about a process for the Management Team and the support of the SER this also relies heavily on the personal interaction of people to maintain and grow the trust between both organisations. With people leaving and new personnel joininig the team dynamics will change.

Delivering performance: Everyone likes to see how well they are getting on and performing. You need to ensure jointly you have an agreed process that measures and records the results as you make progress in delivering the agreed outcomes. This will illustrate how well you are acheiving the overall objectives and that they are still relevant throughout the collaborative engagement.

Analysis of results: Once you have the results for items 4 and 5 above you need to jointly review and agree what actions need to be taken, if any. Ascertaining where improvements can me made will keep the team focussed on delivering benefits for all parties. Remember, these reviews need to be recorded.

Issue resolution: When you are working with other people in other organisations over a period of time there will be disagreements. How you resolve these will be have an impact on how successful your colloration will be. Empowering people to resolve issues without having to escalate issues earlier rather than later is always a god start. Having a joint procedure that facilittes this will help you greatly.

Joint exit strategy: This is covered in more detail in Clause 10 suffice to say nearly all relationships come to an end (I am sure there are one or two that go on – but not forever). The activity during the Staying Together is to periodically review the exit strategy to make sure it is relevant with current and future activities.

Relationship Management Plan: During this stage the RMP acts as a joint record of the overall relationship. You need to make sure that the SER’s jointly review and it is regularly maintained.

Staying together will be one of the most challenging stages of your collaboration with other people and organisations. By proactively implementating and taking action on these 9 steps, will help you to maximise the value of working jointly with your business partner.

As you consider the benefits of using BS 11000 you might like to think about using a BS 11000 visual and collaborative team site to facilitate joint collaboration. Using such a collaborative, easy to use team site will cause a dramatic increae in your joint collaboration capability.

This may not be relevant to you but a recent MIT Sloan Management Review identified that Mosanto concluded that if they could help just 20 of their less-efficient project managers and leaders become average in collaborative efficiency, they would save up to 1500 hours a week, collectively with the people that they interacted with.

How much could you save?

Once you have completed your request you can get a complimentary introduction to BS 110000 emailed direct to you. But first go and claim your Free BS 11000 Consulattion and lets discover how much you could save.